


Mother Knows Best

by Gayer_Yet_Gayer (IronicAppreciation)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: But he's not pathetic because I'm sick of people portraying him as helpless, Crockercorp AU, Gen, John is smol, Mom! Condesce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 11:21:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10898292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IronicAppreciation/pseuds/Gayer_Yet_Gayer
Summary: Mommy won't let them hurt you.





	Mother Knows Best

John woke with a tumultuous start, his heart beating cumbersomely in his chest, pounding as his breath tumbled from his lips in strangled gasps. Beads of perspiration drenched his forehead as his hands clenched into sullen fists, gripping his bedsheets vehemently and arousing a choked cough that erupted through his lungs. His throat felt unprecedentedly dry as he panted out, broken hacking tearing through his esophagus painstakingly. He blinked, his vision adjusting to the perpetrating dark, permeating through bright crimson curtains and consuming the room in an intangible void. 

He blinked again.

Pudgy six-year-old fingers grasped for his pillow, knees curling up to hug his torso as he wrapped knobby arms around himself, shivering. The panting subsided, and was replaced by minuscule, silent tears that dissolved as soon as they hit the air. Distorted sobs muffled into the cloth of his comforters, and he slipped further underneath copious quilts, hiding from a monstrosity that he couldn’t escape.

When the noiseless, gaping pore became too loud, too much, he called out, sobs wrenching into desperate cries as he yelled for the only thing he knew.

“MOM!!” 

Sheets of thick black hair clung to his ever-paling face, and his tiny shoulders shook with unstiflable hiccups as he embraced the pillow tighter, biting into the fabric slightly to keep from crying out.

“Mom…”

A light beyond his bedroom shone suddenly, and footsteps approached with encroaching speed, soft yet steady, before the door squeaked open and incited a yelp from the ball of blankets curled precariously in the corner.

“...Mom?”

“...”

John sat up tentatively at the silence, observing the stature silhouette of a slight boy in the massive doorframe, with somewhat tousled hair and a skinny stance.

That was  _ not  _ mom. 

“You’re not mom”

“Wow, I hadn’t realized.”

The shadow moved forward, and John recalled that anything and everything that wasn’t a part of his immediate family was malevolent and wanted to hurt him. Panicking somewhat, he flailed frantically, scanning the prudently visible area for something with which to defend himself. He settled for a small lamp that sat upon his bedside table, forgetting in his moment of delusioned fear that monsters were repelled by light, and the thing would’ve provided a much more effective weapon plugged in and turned on than it did swinging limply in his fragile, childish hands.

Nevertheless, he held it up resolutely, and the figure petrified before him, sputtering out.

“Hey-don’t. Okay, calm down, dude, I’m not gonna hurt-I’m not, okay LISTEN TO ME!”

The not-mom grabbed his lamp before John could make any motion of offense, his eyes widening as cold fingers collided with his balled hands. In the closer proximities, he noted the stranger’s appearance more vividly, a curtain of fair hair falling in a fringe over his abhorrently pale face, wide, bright eyes contrasting placidly with his phantom-like complexion, and sparse freckles littering thin cheeks.

Yup. Definitely not mom. 

He was frozen for what felt like perpetual years, although the other boy barely got a chance to relax tense, narrow shoulders before John’s fist collided sharply with his stomach, impacting his gut with an anguished thud. 

He stumbled back, crumbling as his arms clutched his torso and he wheezed, and within seconds, he’d been reduced to a coughing, vulnerable fit on the floor. John hoisted the aforementioned lamp to strike again, but faltered upon noticing that the ghost was the ephemeral apparition of a  _ child _ , one that couldn’t have possibly been older than he was. 

He paused, giving the ghost a moment to gather himself, recomposing gradually, and still coughing out softly as he blinked, meeting his gaze with batting eyelids. 

“Ow.”

Something in John coerced an instantaneous apology, but he quickly remedied his inadvertent instinct, refraining from exposing any sympathy and instead contorting the most menacing expression he could manage.

The ghost raised an eyebrow.

“What’s-what’s happening to your face? Are you okay?”

He stumbled. Feigned concern was  _ not _ something he was about to fall for.

“Who are you?!” He interrogated intimidatingly, proud of his lilted voice for not stuttering. 

“Oh my-SHH, not so loud. Do you want to get heard!?”

His gaze narrowed.

“Answer my question.”

“Well, I’m  _ not  _ mom.” he grinned, but reposed when John only huffed in response, small hands clutching dismally to his weapon. “Okay, okay, chill. I’m Dave.” He extended an arm amicably, smiling.

John paused, unsure about how to proceed. Fortunately, Ghost/Dave continued for him.

“That’s...probably not very helpful to you. Ummm…”

His countenance scrunched curiously, pondering as he retracted the affronting limb. “I’m here with my family to steal up your house.”

“...what?”

“Yeah! Only Roxy says it’s not actually stealing, cuz of your family’s all greedy old carbonation and we’re gonna give the stuff to nicer people.”

“...What’s a carbonation?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. Only it’s bad. And you’re bad for being a part of it.”

John’s face dissolved into a pout, and he crossed his arms discontentedly, forgetting in the moment to be serious and stoical.

“I’m not bad! And my family’s not bad either. And you shouldn’t steal stuff.”

“It’s not stealing though!” Dave insisted, crawling up onto John’s bed, a loose shirt hanging limply from his thin frame, “it's umm,  _ redistributing _ .”

John stared incredulously, not entirely certain what that meant. Exhaling exasperatedly, he repeated venomously, “we're not  _ bad” _

Dave shrugged. “Okay dude, I mean, you don't seem that awful to me, it's just my brother n sister don't like you very much”

He slouched back personably, shaking blonde hair from his eyes and blinking lethargically, yawning. 

“You look sleepy,” John’s bristle tone now held a subtle touch of concern, his knuckles beginning to ache from the prior impact, and remorse engulfing him unrelentingly as he gazed ostentatiously at the other boy.

“M’not allowed to sleep very much, cuz of Dirk says you gotta have constant vigilance.”

John cocked his head ambivalently, “What’s that?”

Dave shrugged again in lieu of a reply, lying down on his stomach and resting his chin upon the discarded pillow. “I’m not sure, but it means that I can only take naps sometimes, but never actually sleep”

He frowned emphatically. “That sounds horrible. My sister loves sleeping. Momma says she has narco-narc-narca-umm…” John wrinkled his nose, scrunching his face in distinct determination, “narcoplepsy, I think”

Dave stared at him intently, crossing skinny, freckle-littered arms about himself and nodding. “Mh.”

John sighed steadily, resting against the bed’s backboard and fumbling with his fingers, before gasping suddenly, alerting the Dave as he jumped up frantically. 

The doorway was once again occupied, this time by a brusque, amassed figure whose opacity blotted out nearly all the light seeping intrusively from the hallway. She was tall, imposingly so, adorned in an idiosyncratically fitted bathrobe that circumvented shapely arms, her hands placed obtrusively on wide hips. Her body, although broad, was nubile, inhumanly long legs daintily pressed to the floor, black mess of hair not unlike John’s, pinned up with a multitude of curlers.

_ Mom. _

John leapt from the bed, a beam gracing his features as he ran to the pertinent figure, overbite protruding and conspicuous, having completely forgotten the young intruder on his bed. He didn’t so much as spare Dave a second glance, although, had he done so, he ought to have registered the contortion of fear draining his already pale face of what little pigmentation it held.

“Momma! Momma! Mommy, what are you doing here? I thought you were sleeping!”

“I could say the same for you, dear.”

Her voice was smooth and saccharine, a mellifluously deep lull warbling from her larynx. Viscous like honey, full lips pursed pleasantly as she swooped down to give her son an affectionate kiss, combing long, slender fingers through his hair, her hand nearly the size of his entire, admittedly minimal, girth. 

“Unfortunately, my beauty sleep was contemptibly disturbed by some _ unwelcome guests _ .”

The woman rose, the practiced smile she wore amidst her beloved children contorting into a malevolent glare as she scowled deplorably at the boy now desperately attempting to shrink back into the bed, recoiled and shaking. 

John giggled, swiveling to smile brightly at Dave. “Oh, yeah! Mom, this is Dave. He thinks you’re a mean bad guy. Tell him he’s wrong, Momma!” 

A condescending smirk suddenly crawled over her countenance, and she approached intimidatingly, ensuing to lean over the bed, her nose within the capacity for contact of the petrified thing shriveled as fallibly into the backboard as he could manage, thin body curled to appear even more minuscule. 

“Is. That. So?” 

John abruptly felt the temperature plummet, the atmosphere in the room going briskly frigid. Inadvertently, he shivered, flinching back from a threat whose presence he wasn’t even sure tangibly existed.

“...Mom?”

With a swift, conspicuously muscled arm, the woman swept forward, fingers curling ruthlessly around the young thief’s thin neck, sharp fingernails digging into his flesh. She lifted him by the throat, and he thrashed, gasping and yelping in pain, his access to air all too easily severed. 

Another nanosecond passed, an untraceable movement, a shift in her stature, and he was thrown brutally into the wall, colliding with several sharp snaps and a multitude of audible cracks, crashing with enough force to ingrain a dent before collapsing with a thud to the floor. 

The entire event must’ve transpired in less than a second, and John was shrieking before he could fathom what had happened, before the reason for his bloodcurdling screams of pure horror and panic could waive through his small, underdeveloped mind. 

Dave wasn’t moving.

And then, as soon as the biting sting of frightful adrenaline had wrenched through his tiny body, it was gone, because he’d been swooped effortlessly, gently into his mother’s arms, soothing, consolidating shooshes and hums reaching his ears through his own excruciating yells. The sobs melted into ambivalent, horrific wracking, and he curled into her instinctively for protection.

Big blue orbs of irises gazed up at her, didn’t dare avert to look back at the body on the opposite side of the room, blinking and panting as she smiled and rocked him, a familiar tune escaping sweet, sedating lips. 

It took many minutes, perhaps even an entire hour, for John to adequately regain composure, tensed muscles relaxing and soft, silent tears ceasing, his agape mouth with many a loose tooth eventually closing while he shuddered unstiflably. 

Mom remained, a constant, reverberating presence, the same strong arms that had wrung the other boy to his death wrapped warmly around her own. Soon enough, John forgot why he was crying. 

Sniffles subsiding, he glanced at her as she pecked his forehead, her voice soft, shielding, unwavering. 

“What’s wrong dear?”

“I-I-I had a n-nightmare.” 

She chuckled sympathetically, holding him somehow closer.    
“My poor baby. It’s okay. You’re okay. It’s not real. It can’t hurt you.”

He sighed tentatively, remnants of baby chub lingering on his slender arms as he reached to hug her. She was right. Of course she was right. Mom was always right. 

For the first time, he looked over at the blank corpse of the ghost boy writhing in the corner, and almost laughed. It was okay. He was okay. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t hurt him.

Exhausted, his puny brain vastly overworked, he yawned, slowly dozing off with a cozy smile on his face. 

The grin was mirrored in his mother’s sharp, satiated teeth, her lips spreading as she set her son back in his bed, tucking him under the covers before moving to rectify the destruction, humming to herself as she moved to the predicament making a mess of her home. 

The boy, as it turned out, wasn’t yet dead, remarkably resilient. Unable to speak or scream, the majority of the bones in his emaciated little body were shattered and useless, and wide red irises stared up at her, imploring, entreating, so very afraid, and in so much inscrutable pain.

Smiling down at him, she ran him through the gut with a golden studded trident that appeared to have been drawn from thin air, his skinny form giving one final, agonized jerk before going limp, his blood bubbling up and tainting the carpeting, the same violent crimson shade as his eyes.

She threw the cadaver from the window, assured that the nearby wildlife would rid her of the problem. With a sigh, she settled to rub out the gruesome smears, inconvenienced only a little by the petty, superfluous chore. Still humming, she knew as day broke that in only a few more hours, she’d be beckoned by the hungry calls of her children. Such was the life of a busy, successful mother. 

She finished cleaning and scrubbing, admiring scrutinously her proficient handiwork. Deciding to relish the final few precious hours of sleep she might receive in the impending light of dawn, she kissed her baby boy one last time.

“Mommy won’t let it hurt you.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
==> Your name is John Crocker, you’re 17 years old, and you have no clue how that weird dent in your wall got there.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a slut for death and pain


End file.
